In Defense of Psycho-Conservatism

post by alkjash · 2018-01-09T21:49:41.112Z · LW · GW · 5 comments

This is a link post for https://radimentary.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/in-defense-of-psycho-conservatism/

I'm experimenting in putting some of my rationality-adjacent posts on LessWrong. The Schelling place for comments is LessWrong.

Also, it seems like people prefer content mirroring over linkposts. Is there a standard way to do that or is it just copy-pasting?

5 comments

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comment by Viliam · 2018-01-17T00:33:17.570Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I agree about the importance of the shadow. People who are not aware of their own shadow are either extremely naive (and ready to get exploited), or in deep denial (in which case they shouldn't call themselves "rationalists" because they already made truth their enemy). To give a few specific examples, in the past people stole money from rationalist organizations, or used LW to promote their wannabe political cult.

I wish I could speak better about important and underestimated topics like this, and perhaps my atheism has cost me some useful vocabulary.

Replies from: alkjash
↑ comment by alkjash · 2018-01-17T06:01:06.879Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm glad there was something of value for you! Regarding the religious language, I've been an atheist my entire life but still find religious and mythological vocabulary very useful. I wouldn't worry too much about the exact words - I think the rationalist community is doing a reasonably good job of revivifying it for the modern age despite their (our) prejudices against it - see Moloch, Sabbathing, and HPMOR for examples.

On a related note, I attended a Christian meeting recently out of curiosity and was struck by the absurd value of a regular weekly ritual where laypeople reflect on and talk about good and evil, and how much I am missing that.

comment by habryka (habryka4) · 2018-01-10T06:42:14.955Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Copy-pasting is the default way for now. For people who have posted a bunch and have a bunch of karma I am also happy to set up automatic crossposting, so that we automatically copy over the HTML, but we are limiting that to a smaller subset of people because of spamming and abuse potential.

Replies from: alkjash
↑ comment by alkjash · 2018-01-10T15:29:39.739Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Thanks, I'll do that in the future.

comment by Qiaochu_Yuan · 2018-01-21T02:19:33.971Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Nice. I'm very happy to see people talking about soul damage on LW.